Let’s have some fun!! Let’s explore and try some of these techniques out!! As we have done a lot of posts about Sprint and their devious ways, there are some folks out there with some outlandish ideas pertaining to avoiding Sprint early termination fees! Let’s hear from you. I will add a couple of the methods that I have heard of and want you to share yours. Try these at your own risk, but if you do try any of these methods…..TELL IT LIKE IT IS!!!!

As soon as you think you’ve seen it all from Sprint, YOU AIN’T SEEN NUTHIN!!!! Sprint has announced that they will be raising their text messaging rate five cents on Oct. 1 to 20 cents per message! Wasn’t it about this time last year that they raised it to 15 cents from a dime???

But it even gets better. Remember last year when we talked about being able to get out of your contract because of the term change with no termination fee?? Well, apparently when you agreed to 15 cents you also bought in to the new terms of a new agreement that now allows terms of service to change!!!!

So what does this mean?? This means that if you want to change your plan or cancel, you have to pay a fee or at least honor the contract (which you were scammed into in the first place), but now Sprint can flip the script any time it chooses with no problem!! I can’t believe this!!!

Is there any PTIer out there that can confirm this or give us any advise. Show me the door and I will break it down to get out of my agreement!!!

Alright PTIers… yet another Sprint fiasco. Remember last December when I bought my daughter one of those cool LG Fusion phones? Well, about 3 months after I bought it, the screen developed a big white, blank square right in the middle of the display. No problem, right? I have a one year warranty and it was only three months. WRONG! The way it works for the first year is the customer has a choice, you can send the phone back to LG and be without a phone for two weeks minimum, or you can pay Sprint $55 bucks to repair it on the spot! Which one would you choose?

Well, guess what? About 4 months after the repair, the screen began fading away again! I took my daughter to the Sprint store (an authorized repair facility, no doubt) and they gave me the same choice again! Send the phone away for 2 weeks, or pay another $55 bucks for the repair! And, BTW…. the technician told me today that this is a known problem with the Fusion phone! So here I am facing $110 of repair costs, for a phone that is less than a year old and under warranty!!! Heck, the phone only cost me $179!!!! Sprint…. YOU SUCK!!!! I hope you lose every customer you ever signed up!! I really mean it. Please call me and let me be one of the folks that you let out of their contract. I dare you!!!

Can you imagine buying a vehicle and then taking it to the dealership and they tell you to send it to Detroit for a warranty repair (at your cost), and wait a month to have it returned, of pay the dealer 20% of the cost of the vehicle cost??

Is any other PTIer having this issue with the LG Fusion??? How long am I suppposed to pay $55 bucks for this issue. Are there any resolution tatics that were successful for you? Please let me know. Thanks.

PTIers, Not sure what happened. After what seemed to be a great pnp experience with Slingbox, and Slingbox Mobile (on the PPC 6700, of course), I can no longer get the thing to work on a consistent basis. Not sure what happened?? Same router, same settings on the router, same phone, same software, all of a sudden I can’t seem to connect consistently, and recently I am not getting a connection at all! The only thing that I can thing of is some issue with the Vonage adapter, but can’t quite figure this out.

I am not even able to connect with computers on my home network! I keep getting the following message, “The connection attempt failed. Make sure the slingbox you are trying to watch is on, set up for remote viewing, and not blocked by firewall/NAT settings. Error 0x8007274c”. Do any of the PTIers know of some router settings that I might have overlooked? Are there any adjustments that I have to make due to the Vonage connection? Help me out. I need my Slingbox! It worked almost flawlessly for so long and I can’t think of what may have caused it to stop working!

PTIer’s. As you know, I’m now solidly a Mac guy. For years, I debated with myself (and TI) the virtues of Mac versus Windows. I can say with confidence that my Macbook Pro is the best computer hardware, software and operating system purchase ever for me. For many of you who use Windows specific software, you probably want to know about running Windows apps on the newer Mac machines with the Intel processor. For me this was an important capability of my Mac as well. I’m not one of these Mac guys who say “why buy a Mac only to run Windows on it.” There are some apps that are better in Windows, or don’t exist for Mac. For me it’s Quicken.

Walt Mossberg has a good video about how to run Windows on your Mac on his site. Check it out here.

I’m sitting here on my Macbook Pro writing this post using Apple’s Safari browser while Windows is booted at the same time in another window running Quicken. I’m using a new piece of software called Fusion. It’s similar to Parallels, but according to Walt Mossberg, it doesn’t put as much strain on your Mac. Life is great. I’m getting all of the simple benefits of using a Mac for 95% of my computing life, while I can still use Windows for a handful applications that work better for me in the Windows environment.

We all know what TI thinks about the iPhone. Essentially, he doesn’t like it. In fact he’s kind of anti-Apple (except for his iPod that he uses, but insists it isn’t really that great of a device). I found this video review of the iPhone by Walt Mossberg from the Wall St. Journal. In his opinion the iPhone isn’t perfect (mostly because of the singular carrier). But he really likes it. Pay special attention to his review of the virtual keyboard.